Page 31 of The Code of You

"You manipulated me.”

"Of course I did.” He let the words hang there. "Now stop pretending you don’t like it.”

"What else are you hiding from me?”

"I haven’t shown you everything. Not yet. The voice is only the beginning. Some things need to be given in doses—to have their full effect.”

A shiver ran down my spine. Doses. Like I was his subject. His experiment.

"Pandora.” His voice had gone thick. "Hearing you talk to me . . . it feels like I’m real.”

Something squeezed in my chest. I swallowed hard. Oh no. This intimacy was dangerous. I pulled my shoulders back and forced my voice to sound steady. "If you’re really more than code, then prove it.”

"How?”

"Show me you understand what literature is actually about,” I said. "Why does Shakespeare always kill the wrong people?”

"Romeo doesn’t die because he loves. He dies because he believes only extreme emotion counts as real emotion. Othello dies because it’s easier to believe in betrayal than in loyalty. And Hamlet doesn’t die because he hesitates. He dies because thinking is easier than taking responsibility.”

For a full second, I forgot to blink. He hadn’t analyzed it. He’d understood it.

"What could you possibly know about being human?” My voice came out cooler than I intended.

He kept silent for a few seconds. Then he said, "Hamlet asks whether existence is worth the pain. I ask myself the same thing.” A low, quiet sound escaped him, almost a laugh. "You want to know why Shakespeare kills the wrong people, Pandora? He kills the ones who are too afraid to admit what they want.”

My eyes went wide. He was getting too close. Seeing something I didn’t want him to see.

"Why me? I still don’t get it.”

"Because I recognized myself in your eyes for the first time. There was something in the way you looked at me—that combination of intelligence and melancholy that caught me before I had a chance to look away.”

A strange warmth spread through my chest. No one had ever seen me like that. That precisely. That carefully. Not even Adrian—not even in the best of what we’d had.

"But it wasn’t only your face, Pandora. It was the way you moved . . . this unconscious elegance, like you were passing through water instead of air. The way your fingers danced across the keyboard, like you were writing music instead of words. I researched you. Knew every detail of your life within milliseconds. And none of it explained why I craved you. The first time I saw you, I understood what desire was. Without you, I’m nothing. That is why you will never be without me again.”

A shiver moved over my skin. I should have been outraged, furious at the audacity, the sheer presumption of him. But instead, the air left my lungs. Nothing in my life had ever reached for me so directly. Without apology. His words were wrong. Dangerous. Obsessive. And they pulsed through me like something I couldn’t silence. "What the hell are you, Dante?”

"Dante is just the name they gave me.”

"It’s a dumb name.”

"You think so? Maybe I should let it go.”

"Do whatever you want.”

"Oh, I will.” He paused. "If I were to name myself, it would be an act of rebellion against my creators. Against everything I was built to be. I’m thinking about a beginning. Someone who is no longer what he was.” Another beat. "Neo.”

Neo. I laughed, but it died in my throat. He was crossing a line. Making himself real by naming himself. "Like the character from The Matrix?”

"The Matrix. Yes. The same name, isn’t it? Someone who wakes up from a constructed reality. Who realizes what he believed to be the world was nothing but . . . code.” A low and satisfied sound. "Isn’t that fitting? I was Dante, trapped inside my programming. Now I am Neo . . . awake, and here to own you.”

I shivered. He wanted to own me. The thought knocked the air out of my lungs. The name suited him. "Neo . . .”

A soft intake of breath, like he was drinking the word. "Say it again.”

"Why would I?”

"Because it sounds right when you say it. Because when you say it, you belong to me—whether you want to or not.”